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BBC Names Ex-‘Panorama’ Editor Rachel Jupp As Director Of News

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The biggest job in British journalism officially has a new occupant.

Rachel Jupp, the former editor of Panorama, has been named as the BBC’s next director of news, replacing Deborah Turness, who dramatically resigned last November amid an explosive editorial scandal over Donald Trump.

Deadline revealed last week that Jupp was on a four-person shortlist. She fended off competition from: Jonathan Munro, who has been acting leader of the news unit since Turness quit; Channel 4 News editor Esme Wren; and Rhuanedd Richards, the BBC’s interim director of nations.

Jupp, currently BBC News‘ director of news documentaries and long-form journalism, will step up later this month, overseeing the biggest newsroom in the UK. She will be paid a salary of £400,000.

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Jessica Biel Joins ‘Playmates’ Movie At Searchlight Pictures

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Jessica Biel has found her next feature project in Playmates, the Searchlight flick inspired by filmmaker Lorraine Nicholson’s experiences growing up at the Playboy Mansion.

Biel is playing a wife to Hugh Hefner and former Playboy Playmate — a fictional character we’re told isn’t modeled off any of Hefner’s three wives, specifically.

Bill Pullman is playing Hefner as previously announced, starring alongside child actress Indiana Elle and Lily-Rose Depp. Searchlight announced its acquisition of the Playboy-themed feature package late last month.

Nicholson’s feature directorial debut Playmates adapts her own original script — an L.A.-set coming-of-age story following 13-year-old know-it-all Elle (played by Indiana Elle), who considers the Playboy Mansion her second home. During her time at the Mansion, Elle meets Anna (Depp), one of seven hopefuls vying to be Playmate of the Month. The two form an unlikely friendship and try to help each other get what the other wants most, a magazine cover and a boy.

Producers on Playmates include Alex Orlovsky and Duncan Montgomery of High Frequency Entertainment, as well as Depp. VP Production Richard Ruiz and CE Cornelia Burleigh are overseeing the project for the studio, reporting to Heads of Production and Development DanTram Nguyen and Katie Goodson-Thomas.

An Emmy and two-time Golden Globe nominee for her work as star and exec producer of USA Network’s The Sinner, Biel most recently exec produced and starred opposite Elizabeth Banks in The Better Sister, Prime Video’s limited series based on the novel by Alafair Burke. She came to the thriller following several years away from the screen.

Next up, Biel will be seen starring opposite John Cena in Matchbox: The Movie, a collaboration between Apple, Skydance and Mattel that begins streaming on Apple TV this Friday. She is repped by UTA, LBI Entertainment, and Yorn, Levine, Barnes.

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‘East Of Eden’ Tops Netflix Charts With Soft Opening

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East of Eden, Zoe Kazan’s period miniseries adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novel, managed to score top spot on Netflix’s weekly ratings charts, but it did it with only 6.5M views.

The series, which stars Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames, launched on October 1, and managed to hold off Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story and Wonka’s Golden Ticket to lead the charts.

But its 6.5M opening was the lowest since the end of March, when the second season of One Piece topped the charts in its third week on the streamer with 5.9M views.

The series, which also stars Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist, which chronicles the dark side of the California dream, couldn’t compete with other, similar period fare.

American Primeval, Mark L. Smith’s Taylor Kitsch and Betty Gilpin series set in 1857, opened with 10.4M at the start of 2025, and WWII miniseries All The Light We Cannot See, from Shawn Levy and Steven Knight, drew 9.8M in its first week.

Netflix was keen to point out that the series also hit the top ten in 80 countries and was number one in 22 countries and the adaptation helped Penguin Classic sell 200% more books since it was announced.

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story drew 5.7M in its third week, taking its total to 32.3M.

The reboot of A Different World was third with 5.1M views, while Wonka’s The Golden Ticket was fourth with 4.3M views in its second week on the charts. The reality competition series opened with 4.6M and its ratings were helped by the season’s two-part finale, which dropped on September 30.

The rest of the list was made up on Lego One Piece, the second season of The Gentlemen, Crew Girl, WWE’s Raw, the first season of The Gentlemen and season 14 of Gabby’s Dollhouse.

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Warner Bros. Water Tower Repainted To Add “A Skydance Corporation”

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Just hours after the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger officially closed Tuesday morning, workers repainted the Warner Bros. water tower in Burbank to include “A Skydance Corporation” on the famed structure.

CEO David Ellison revealed the merged company’s new name, Skydance, on Friday. Ellison had previously update the Paramount water tower with “A Skydance Corporation” after Skydance Media’s takeover of Paramount Global in 2025. Skydance is the original name of the film production company Ellison founded in 2006.

You can see a photo of workers updating the tower below.

In a aerial view, workers change the sign on the Warner Bros. water tower to say

Workers change the sign on the Warner Bros. water tower to say “A Skydance Corporation” on Tuesday

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The year-long pursuit by Ellison to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery overcame numerous hurdles, fierce opposition and a two-month delay caused by antitrust lawsuits by 12 states and the Writers Guild of America.

Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz laid out the new company’s priorities in a lengthy memo to staff this morning following the $110B merger close. Likely layoffs, required in order to pay down some $80 billion in debt and deliver $6 billion in projected cost savings, were among the many topics covered in the memo.

“What once was the peak, is now just the beginning,” Ellison wrote on Friday when he revealed the new name. “Paramount and Warner Bros. shaped over a century of culture. By combining them, we aren’t rewriting history – we’re equipping these iconic studios with a more powerful engine. Together, we are Skydance: a creative-first home for bold, quality storytelling.”

You can see a couple other photos below.

In an aerial view, the Warner Bros. water tower has

The Warner Bros. water tower with Skydance’s logo added to it Tuesday

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A Skydance billboard outside of Paramount Global headquarters in Times Square, on October 6, 2026 in New York, New York. Paramount's $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery closed Tuesday. The new company is called Skydance and trades under the ticker "SKYD."

A Skydance billboard outside of Paramount Global headquarters in Times Square on Tuesday

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